Archinect - News

Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger demolish Craig Ellwood's 1950 Zimmerman House, raising ire online

2024-04-22T18:12:00-04:00

Chris Pratt has drawn ire from architecture aficionados after news broke that the actor and his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, had razed a historic, mid-century modern home to make way for a sprawling 15,000-sq-ft mansion. Architect Ken Ungar, whose portfolio largely features high-end modern farmhouse-style residences, will design a home for the couple, Architectural Digest reported. The property [...] will also feature a three-car garage and a secondary unit near the pool.

As The Guardian reported, plans for a demolition went mostly under the radar until the Los Angeles Conservancy issued a warning last January. Actor Chris Pratt and his wife Katherine Schwarzenegger purchased the home later with the apparent intention of replacing it with an oft-reviled “modern farmhouse” design and have yet to respond to any other news outlets or critics, who are framing this as a loss tantamount to the destruction of Marcel Breuer's binuclear Geller I house on Long Island in January of 2022.

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University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa architecture students use AI and 3D modeling to preserve Lahaina heritage structures lost in August wildfires

2024-03-29T12:51:00-04:00

A new course being taught to undergraduate students this semester at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Architecture is helping preservationists on Maui document lost heritage structures using the same AI-augmented 3D modeling technology that was previously incorporated into the rebuilding of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Co-taught by Dean William Chapman, Associate Professor Hyoung-June Park, and visiting Assistant Professor Kyung Hoon Hyun of South Korea’s Hanyang University, ARCH 490: Rebuilding Lahaina in Mixed Reality offers students the chance to aid in the recovery efforts by creating digital versions of lost buildings such as the Baldwin House, Wo Hing Society Hall, and Old Lahaina Courthouse.

"We want students to expand their creativity to think of more than simply rebuilding what was destroyed, but also what they can do with this new 3D model that they created," Hyun explained to Hawaii Public Radio recently. "They can add values or communal experiences within ...

Sasaki will design new comprehensive master plan for Taliesin West

2024-03-26T16:54:00-04:00

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has announced its selection of Sasaki Associates to create a new comprehensive master plan for Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Plans for a new campus will guide the development of any new projects on the 620-acre campus (a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site) in line with the Foundation’s Taliesin West Preservation Plan from 2015. Their aim is to re-establish the site as a cultural destination for "future generations."

The site, which Wright settled with his third wife Olgivanna in the 1930s, had included a school that almost shuttered due to financial difficulties before reversing its decision and relocating to two sites in Paradise Valley at the start of the pandemic.

Photo credit: Andrew Pielage

The firm says: "The comprehensive plan for Taliesin West represents a significant step in ensuring the long-term preservation and vitality of this architectural masterpiece. By engaging with the site’s history and ecology, Sasaki’s plan will guid...

Miami Beach preservationists sound the alarm over concerning new building safety law

2024-03-26T15:04:00-04:00

The New York Times has picked a side in the fight between Miami Beach historic preservation advocates and developers supporting the recently signed Resiliency and Safe Structures Act, a law those in the former category claim will augment a devastating erasure of the local architecture character over time.

The rift that has for years played out amidst a backdrop that includes the tragedy at Surfside and a spate of new starchitect-designed developments on the nine-mile island has recent salients in the demolished Deauville Beach Hotel and the yet-decided fate of Miami Marine Stadium.

Advocates say the new law is a guise that uses climate change and building safety as its premise to usher in what is, in reality, a slate of insidious and destructive requirements. The Commercial Observer said they also work to "hamstring the powers of municipalities to dictate what can replace demolished structures."

Restoration of Saarinen-designed First Christian Church tower completed in Columbus, Indiana

2024-02-23T08:03:00-05:00

The Landmark Columbus Foundation has shared photos of Louis Joyner Architect's completed tower restoration of the landmark First Christian Church in Columbus, Indiana, designed by Eero Saarinen and his father, Eliel, in 1942.

The project took eight months to complete, wrapping up this past December.

The church’s 166-foot-high freestanding clock tower served as the main focus of the restoration work, which took place in four main parts, with repairs also needed to account for significant masonry cracking, rust, and water damage to its interior.

Photo: Hadley Fruits for Landmark Columbus Foundation

Contractors stabilized the 50 uppermost feet of the tower by first removing its east and west walls and then taking the brick veneer off its north and south edifices, removing parapets, and then installing a new concrete block support onto the 166-foot-tall structure.

Photo: Hadley Fruits for Landmark Columbus Foundation

The brick veneer was later re-installed in addition to locally quarr...

Banksy murals to be digitally preserved as part of new UK art database

2024-02-09T14:28:00-05:00

Art by the famous artist Banksy is to be included in a new initiative to document the UK’s murals. As reported by The Art Newspaper, the project will see more than 5,000 murals from across the UK digitally recorded for access in a free public database.

The project is being overseen by the educational charity Art UK with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The three-year initiative will see public works recorded by a network of volunteer researchers and photographers, alongside documenting the stories behind the pieces.

“The location of murals, the circumstances behind their creation, and the materials used to create them can result in this type of artwork being ephemeral in nature,” Art UK says about the project. “Buildings and housing estates are demolished to make way for new developments meaning that many murals have been lost. We will record the murals as they look now, to provide a record if they are removed, defaced, or suffer environmental damage.”

Related on Arc...

New digital guide documents African American cultural landscapes

2024-02-07T15:19:00-05:00

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) just launched a brand new initiative called the What’s Out There Guide to African American Cultural Landscapes. So far, the digital guide documents over 140 sites associated with African American culture lifeways as well as nearly 30 biographies and is part of the foundation's four-year-old Race and Space program.

The TCLF says the production of the guide required some rethinking of its four existing categorizations of cultural landscapes. Nine themes (Enslavement, Impacts of African Cultures on the American Landscape, The Underground Railroad, Reconstruction, The Civil Rights Movement, Education, Public Accommodations, Commemoration and Healing, and Elevating Designers and Shapers) were created to reconstrue them into their proper contexts.

This will be of value to future research endeavors, the TCLF says, while equally helpful in promoting the stewardship of the sites, both of which are related to its organizational mission to "connect peop...

Paul Revere Williams-designed Blind Children's Center is getting remodeled for a new century of service in Los Angeles

2024-02-06T15:02:00-05:00

A renovation of the historic Paul Revere Williams-designed Blind Children’s Center (BCC) is underway in Los Angeles. The 80-year-old structure that preceded Williams’s seminal St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis and other hospital designs in Southern California by twenty years is now being remodeled and modernized to match the expanded needs of the BCC community for a new century.

Williams had been living in his now landmarked first residence in Jefferson Park at the time of his commissioning for the project. His design gave the nonprofit its first permanent home during a period of rampant discrimination, thus serving as a built testament to inclusivity.

The facility in July 2022. Image courtesy of the Blind Children's Center (BCC)

Now, with support from the Ahmanson, W. M. Keck and Rose Hills Foundations, the BCC’s b...

African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund: Another $4 million will go toward preserving Black churches

2024-02-02T12:20:00-05:00

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation has announced another round of funding totaling $4 million that will be put towards preserving Black churches in 22 states across the country.

The program’s second round of funding for the two-year-old Preserving Black Churches initiative will help maintain the legacies of 31 churches.

Black churches in the United States are at the center of the country's lifelong fight for democratic reforms and are a key character in the story of African American's survival and resilience in America. As the historian and advisor to the Action Fund, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., explained, “Black churches have been at the forefront of meaningful democratic reform since this nation’s founding. They’re a living testament to the resilience of our ancestors in the face of unimaginably daunting challenges.”

“The heart of our spiritual world is the Black church. These places of worship, these sacred cultural ...

Docomomo US stands against 'anti-diversity' policies, reinforces values for upcoming Florida symposium

2024-01-16T12:23:00-05:00

Docomomo US has issued a statement clarifying its stance on issues that have been raised in advance of its 2024 National Symposium in Coral Gables, Florida.

The group’s decision to host its annual event in the Miami area had come under scrutiny over the state’s pursuit of “anti-diversity” measures in the past year. The symposium will now continue with a renewed focus on sharing stories that can relate to the experiences of those communities targeted by lawmakers, organizers say. Their statement joins a prior call from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) outlining the detrimental impacts such "anti-woke" policies could have in the architectural education realm in places such as Arkansas, Iowa, South Dakota, and Virginia.

Other new laws and policies in Florida that have been labeled as equally antagonistic to the work of architectural historians and heritage preservation efforts were also decried by Docomomo. Beyond the local slate of major battles that inclu...

Notre Dame’s plans for contemporary stained-glass windows spark cries of ‘vandalism’ in Paris

2023-12-26T14:53:00-05:00

Plans for the contemporary replacement of some of the stained glass windows inside Notre Dame Cathedral’s damaged interior have sparked a considerable outcry from the public a year before the Parisian landmark is set to begin reopening in the wake of the destructive 2019 fire.

Calls for a new competition to design windows for six of Notre Dame’s seven south aisle side chapels has led to a petition signed by 120,000 people urging the French government to reconsider on grounds that they would distort the originality of architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s 19th-century expansion, according to a report from The Guardian.

The new window designs would replace what emerged from the catastrophe undamaged and are therefore considered important relics of the blaze by heritage experts and other conservation specialists. Nevertheless, the Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, requested the French state’s approval of new windows, a solicitation President Emmanuel Macron then threw his office’s suppo...

Bologna unveils plan to reinforce 12th-century leaning tower

2023-12-08T18:30:00-05:00

Work to prevent the collapse of a leaning medieval tower in the heart of the northern Italian city of Bologna will cost €20m ($21.5m) and take 10 years at least, its mayor has said. Last weekend, the city unveiled a €4.3m (£3.7m) project to shore up the Garisenda tower – one of the city’s two towers that look out over central Bologna, providing inspiration over the centuries to painters and poets and a lookout spot during conflicts.

The Garisenda Tower, like the Tower of Pisa, has leaned for centuries as the ground on which it was built gave way soon after its construction. It slants at four degrees compared to 3.9 degrees the Tower of Pisa leans at. Last month, the area around the Garisenda Tower was cordoned off due to increasing concerns about its potential to collapse. Bologna’s mayor, Matteo Lepore, claims that the time to restore the structure will match the 10 years it took to reinforce the Tower of Pisa.

Built in the 12th century, the Garisenda Tower, which stands at approximately 157 feet, sits alongside the taller, and also leaning, Asinelli Tower. As reported by The Guardian, Italy’s civil protection agency has issued a “yellow” alert for the area around the two towers indicating the space is under watch. However, they aren’t believed to pose any immediate risks to people’s safety. The mayor has also urged the government to work to make the towers UNESCO World Heritage sites. Work to reinforce the to...

Renovations complete on Einstein Tower, observatory built to represent Einstein's theory of relativity

2023-09-29T18:03:00-04:00

A solar observatory built to substantiate Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity has been reopened near the German capital after a renovation project to preserve it for future generations. [...] “The Einstein Tower might no longer be at the forefront of research, but it’s not a mere museum piece [...] Following its renovation it’s probably now in a better condition than it was when it was inaugurated almost 100 years ago”

Located on Telegraph Hill in Potsdam, 16 miles southwest of Berlin, Einsteinturm (Einstein Tower) underwent a year of renovations to address its many cracks and extensive dampness, and to preserve its domed zinc roof. The restoration cost approximately $1.2 million.

The structure was built between 1920 and 1922 by German-British architect Erich Mendelsohn in collaboration with astronomer Erwin Finlay-Freundlich. The approximately 66-foot tower was designed to represent and verify Einstein’s theory of relativity. It is considered a landmark in expressionist architecture, with its lack of right angles, organic form, and curved wooden staircase. Originally planned in concrete, a lack of materials after the First World War meant it was built using stucco-covered brick.

The tower is still in operation today as a working solar observatory, run by the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics (AIP). In addition, the working telescopes are the original ones installed nearly a century ago.

...

Marcel Breuer's Wellfleet Cottage is at the center of a preservation battle on Cape Cod

2023-08-24T12:12:00-04:00

Campaigners seeking to save Marcel Breuer’s 1949 Wellfleet Cottage residence on Cape Cod have launched a $1.4 million fundraising effort aimed at saving the home from an expected demolition that’s likely to come in the next few years.

The Cape Cod Modern House Trust is spearheading the effort and says the home they have agreed to purchase from Breuer’s son is in danger adding to the tally of historic designs in the area they have been unable to save through preservation since 2016.

The house was at one time a haven and meeting place for Bauhaus alumni and intellectuals associated with Breuer and his wife Connie. The architect himself designed a large art studio addition in 1961 before adding another apartment and darkroom for his photographer son Tamas in 1968. The Trust says its sale will include all of the home's original furnishings (including pieces from the Eames' and Eero Saarinen), art collection, and private library, which will all be made available to public view after the ...

The struggle between green design and architectural history hangs over the renovation of one Bangkok icon

2023-08-11T18:40:00-04:00

A Bangkok landmark known as the “robot building” has been stripped of its identity, heritage campaigners have said, as they called for the city’s distinctive architecture to preserved. [...] Campaigners have urged the bank to find a way to improve energy efficiency while maintaining the facade’s unique design. They say the lack of legal protection for the building underlines the broader need for changes to how sites of special importance are identified and preserved.

The Guardian tells the story of the Sumet Jumsai-designed near-iconic "Robot Building" at the heart of Bangok’s bustling commercial district. The 37-year-old structure has been undergoing renovations at the hands of Singapore’s United Overseas Bank (UOB), irking fans and preservationists who feel its character is being taken away with the wholesale removal of its original facade and, possibly, other key architectural elements which have made it so distinctively part of the capital's visual landscape.

The bank contends its work is necessary for the well-being of employees and to reduce energy consumption. What could result from the fray is a possible change in the structure of preservation, which mostly favors ancient monuments in the country. Air rights can still be sold to developers, which are in part the target of reform efforts. The saga also touches on the need for greater architectural education for the public, an issue which aided in the demise of Tokyo's Nakagin Capsule Towe...

London’s landmark Marks & Spencer department store gets a new life after court ruling

2023-07-20T17:26:00-04:00

A number of prominent architects had previously voiced their support for retrofitting the century-old store ahead of the inquiry, which began last October at the bequest of Secretary Michael Gove. Gove cited a concern for neighboring landmarks in the vicinity as part of his decision to strike down the retailer's demolition scheme in addition to its potential "lifetime carbon usage."

According to a report today in Bloomberg CityLab, "Marks & Spencer Group Plc will review its future as a fixture on London’s Oxford Street after losing government backing for a plan to demolish its flagship art deco store and rebuild a modern replacement [...] The case is a major win for the campaign group, which argued the 'handsome' building should be retrofitted rather than demolished, on the grounds that it would have a much lower environmental impact."

Advocates, including SAVE Britain's Heritage, hope the ruling will establish precedents by which the future of two dozen or so other "high street ti...

MIT's 'Ways of Seeing' project offers scholars renewed access to four important cultural sites in Afghanistan

2023-07-05T14:24:00-04:00

A new research project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has produced a useful documentation of four hard-to-access multireligious architectural heritage sites in Afghanistan using a combination of digital renderings, satellite imaging, crowdsourced data, and XR technology.

MIT News recently profiled the school’s “Ways of Seeing: Documenting Endangered Built Heritage in Afghanistan” effort, which was the product of multiple departments and research centers within the university. The project was led by MIT’s Sociotechnical Systems Research Center director Fotini Christia, who said it “combines field data, technology, and art to protect heritage and serve the world” in a true evocation of the university’s cross-disciplinary collaborative tradition.

The end result produced two open-access digital archives co-managed via Archnet and MIT Libraries by the Aga Khan Documentation Center and Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Class of 2006 M.Arch graduate Jelena Pejkovic contributed ...

Former Chicago nightclub where House music was born is now a designated landmark

2023-06-22T17:04:00-04:00

A one-time nightclub where the roots of house music spread from a group of Chicago DJs to worldwide prominence is now an official city landmark. [...] “The Warehouse at 206 South Jefferson is where Black and Brown Chicagoans celebrated life and love and the birth of house music, a genre that has taken over the globe [...] The Warehouse is where Frankie Knuckles, a Grammy winner and proud openly gay Black man, created a safe space for everyone.”

The Chicago City Council approved a landmark designation on Wednesday, June 21st, for The Warehouse at 206 S. Jefferson Street in the city’s West Loop. The three-story structure, built in 1906, served as a dance club between 1977 and 1982.

It was where world-renowned artist and House pioneer Frankie Knuckles served as the club’s resident DJ, who used the space to develop and popularize the genre. The club became a safe space for Chicago’s Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ communities. The venue closed in 1983 due to safety concerns.

Today, the building is home to law offices. It has long had no historical protections, allowing the potential of its demolition after being sold in December 2022. This led to the creation of a petition by Preservation Chicago that garnered close to 15,000 signatures calling on the City to recognize and preserve the building. The nonprofit organiz...

African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund announces $3.8 million in 2023 grants to preserve 40 historic sites

2023-06-13T17:43:00-04:00

The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has announced $3.8 million in 2023 grant funding to protect and preserve 40 sites representing African American history. Established in 2017, the Action Fund, which has raised more than $95 million, is the largest U.S. fund dedicated to preserving historic African American sites.

Since its inception, the Action Fund has received a total of 5,638 funding proposals requesting $655 million. The program has been able to support 242 grantee projects through its investment of $20 million.

2023 grant site: Morgan State University’s Jenkins Hall in Baltimore, Maryland. Photo: Troy Pumphrey Jr., image courtesy National Trust for Historic Preservation.

“The Action Fund’s investment in and celebration of 40 historic African American places illustrates our belief that historic preservation plays an important role in American society,” said Brent Leggs, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund exe...

Iraq's Mosul Cultural Museum partially reopens following yearslong restoration

2023-06-12T18:01:00-04:00

The Mosul Cultural Museum was targeted and almost destroyed by the so-called Islamic State (Isis) when the terrorist group took over the Iraqi city in 2014. Less than a decade later, the partially restored museum has restarted its activities once again.

The museum won’t fully reopen until the reconstruction is completed in 2026 following the plans of its original architect, Mohamed Makiya. It joins a slate of other important restoration projects in the city, led by the somewhat controversial UNESCO-backed reconstructions of Al-Nouri Mosque, Our Lady of the Hour Church, and some 124 historic houses.

Several tens of thousands of buildings in Mosul are believed to have been severely damaged or destroyed during the three-year ISIS occupation.

The Art Newspaper also reports that the World Monuments Fund has signed on to oversee the museum project, which will at least partially undo changes made to the museum in 2008.

Nakagin Capsule Tower capsules see new life following building's demolition in 2022

2023-06-09T15:11:00-04:00

The removal and restoration initiative was led by the Nakagin Capsule Tower Preservation and Restoration Project, which was established in 2014. The landmark building, a beacon for the Metabolism architecture movement, was demolished in April 2022.

According to TokyoArtBeat, "After the demolition, 23 capsules were removed and restored under the supervision of Kisho Kurokawa Architects and Associates, and since March, they have been transported to the new locations."

Previously on Archinect: The fate of Nakagin Capsule Tower's pods is getting a little clearer in Toyko

Two capsules are reportedly heading to a project called "SHUTL" by Japanese entertainment company Shochiku. They will be reimagined as creative spaces where contemporary artists can exhibit work, sell art and crafts, and use them for events.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by 中銀カプセルタワービル保存・再生プロジェクト/Nakagin Capsule Tower (@nakagin_capsule_tower)

Another company, Yodogawa Steel Works, Ltd., ...

Istanbul's conservators are scrambling to protect heritage sites from disaster

2023-06-02T11:48:00-04:00

Conservators in Istanbul are racing to safeguard scores of at-risk heritage sites in the wake of Turkey’s deadliest earthquake in modern history, bracing for the probability of an even greater disaster in a city straddling an active faultline.

Consequences of incumbent President Recep Erdoğan’s culture wars and the fallout of a “real-estate mentality that supersedes cultural heritage” have become unnecessary obstacles for volunteers who are up against the impossible challenge of securing 35,000 heritage sites around Istanbul seismically.

February’s deadly Turkey-Syria earthquake primarily affected the country’s easternmost provinces, but still, the metro’s location north of the precarious North Anatolian Fault means the seismic “triage” measures being performed now might not be in place in time for a similar quake scientists say has a very strong likelihood of occurring within the next two decades.

National Trust for Historic Preservation names America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2023

2023-05-09T18:07:00-04:00

One significant theme of the 2023 list is how multicultural communities that grew in parallel with a specific place now face cultural erasure—the gradual disappearance of community landmarks that help tell the story of those who’ve called a place home, along with the loss of treasured local businesses, restaurants, customs, and traditions.

The 2023 list of America's Most Endangered Historic Places, compiled by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, includes:

Osterman Gas Station, Peach Springs, Arizona
Little Santo Domingo, Miami, Florida
Pierce Chapel African Cemetery, Midland, Georgia
Century and Consumers Buildings, Chicago, Illinois
West Bank of St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana
Holy Aid and Comfort Spiritual Church, New Orleans, Louisiana
L.V. Hull Home and Studio, Kosciusko, Mississippi
Henry Ossawa Tanner House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia Chinatown, Pennsylvania
Charleston’s Historic Neighborhoods, South Carolina
Seattle Chinatown-International District, Washington

Elyn Zimmerman’s Marabar sculpture redebuts as Sudama in D.C.

2023-04-04T19:19:00-04:00

Artist Elyn Zimmerman’s 1984 Marabar sculpture has been officially rededicated on the campus of Washington, D.C.’s American University after a yearslong preservation effort spearheaded by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF).

A reconfiguration of the site-specific 225-ton granite sculpture was installed next to the school’s Kay Spiritual Life Center over the last year after being moved from the courtyard surrounding the National Geographic Society headquarters in order to make room for a new plaza expansion designed by Hickock Cole and OLIN.

TCLF President Charles Birnbaum said: “Though we regret the loss of Marabar at its original location, we are pleased that its creator, artist Elyn Zimmerman, with the support of National Geographic, retained the ability to control its reconfiguration and relocation to the American University campus. Had TCLF not intervened beginning in March 2020, when the artist was resigned to the loss of one of her most important works, Zimmerman's instal...

Richard Rogers’ Channel 4 headquarters gains Grade II-listed status in London

2023-04-03T11:58:00-04:00

Following an advocacy campaign by Historic England, the UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport recently granted Grade II-listed status to Richard Rogers Partnership’s 1994 Channel 4 headquarters building in Westminster, London, answering some concerns as to its future after the property was targeted for a private sell-off by the struggling broadcaster just last year.

The group’s official entry praised it as a demonstrative and highly sophisticated design that displayed all the key elements of the High-Tech movement while functioning rather seamlessly as the flexible first home of the country’s high-brow intellectual mainstay.

Historic England cited this status also in terms of its cultural significance, emphasizing its early-90s commissioning came on the heels of Rogers’ seminal Lloyd’s Building and stating that it was one of the “most significant” UK projects of the Italian-born Briti...

Kenzo Tange's 'Boat Gymnasium' in Japan faces demolition

2023-02-21T14:52:00-05:00

An important Kenzo Tange design is facing an uncertain future in Japan’s Kagawa Prefecture after reports that authorities there are moving forward with the demolition of his 1964 “Boat Gymnasium” over disrepair and an apparent inability to fund seismic structural upgrades.

The Brutalist structure in Takamatsu was first shuttered in 2014 and has since been the subject of preservation pushes that unsuccessfully pressured the government to save the building, which shares many of the same stylistic elements as his masterwork Yoyogi National Gymnasium built the same year for the Olympic games in Tokyo.

The news comes almost a year removed from the final fate of the Kisho Kurokawa-designed Nakagin Capsule Tower, which is now being disbursed piecemeal to private enthusiasts and public collections after a long back-and-forth came to a close with preservationists on the losing end.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons user Bigjap (CC0 1.0)

The local Board of Education, which manages the gymnasi...

Philly's infamous police headquarters faces an uncertain future as a symbol of brutality

2023-02-06T18:51:00-05:00

The city of Philadelphia is prepared to release a report detailing a months-long community engagement effort officials say will inform the fate of the Roundhouse, the unusual concrete building that served as police headquarters for more than six decades. Many of the residents who participated in that process said they want to see the shuttered building at 7th and Race streets repurposed as a community hub that recognizes the site’s long history of police abuse.

Philadelphia has a long-frayed relationship between its police department and the community, including most notably the 1985 MOVE Bombing that claimed the lives of 11 activists while displacing another 250 people and destroying 61 homes. The Roundhouse has a central role in this fraught history, and now opinions are split over its proposed future redevelopment.

Robert Geddes, one of the building’s three designers has chimed in to say he feels it should be given a second life as a font for social justice activities and other types of community-based activism. The 125,000-square-foot Brutalist-style structure has also been floated as the potential site of affordable housing, though its layout remains difficult to convert by most estimates.

A final decision on its fate is expected sometime within the calendar year.

The fate of Nakagin Capsule Tower's pods is getting a little clearer in Toyko

2023-01-23T12:11:00-05:00

[Tatsuyuki] Maeda and other members of the nonprofit Nakagin Capsule Tower Preservation and Regeneration project saved 23 capsules, which now sit in a warehouse in Chiba prefecture, near Tokyo. [...] Nakagin Capsule Tower is no longer, but Maeda is confident the restoration project honours the spirit of its creator. “Kurokawa intended for the capsules to adapt and change over time, depending on the environment, and if you think about it, this is exactly what is happening,” he said.

Maeda and his group had been fighting to have the tower properly restored before its demolition began last year. He told the Guardian: “[...] at some point next year it will be possible to see one of these pods in its original state somewhere in Japan.” Once it is, it will become the first among its former compatriots, which are supposedly forthcoming to yet-unnamed digital archives and public collections across the world.

Previously on Archinect: The Nakagin Capsule Tower pods… coming soon to a museum near you

“If one of the pods is left, then I could see myself putting it in a forest, or even inside my house,” he promised further. “But if that’s not possible, I’ll be happy just to be able to watch over them.”

New program created to protect African American burial grounds endangered by construction projects

2022-12-23T11:21:00-05:00

New federal legislation is set to be introduced which will help protect African American burial grounds impacted by new construction. The African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act is part of a series of measures expected to be signed into law by President Biden before the end of 2022 and is the result of five years of bipartisan efforts.

The act will create the African American Burial Grounds Preservation Program, which aims to identify burial grounds ahead of infrastructure projects and commercial development. It is hoped that the program will minimize construction delays on projects, as well as avoid “unnecessary community heartache.” The program will also assist descendants and communities in expressing their histories through grant money to identify, interpret, and preserve historic cemeteries.

“The African American Burial Grounds Preservation...

Architecture's controversies in 2022: The industry continued to be scarred by strife and scandal

2022-12-21T08:00:00-05:00

The year’s end brings the chance to survey architecture’s progression and social impact through salient entryways that include labor, activism, and the development of topical building trends.

Another way of recapping things is by looking at the varied rows, discord, stories of ill-treatment, and critical reactions to certain projects that shape the way the architecture progresses and is viewed by the broader public. With everything from conflict to college dorms domineering the news cycle, our coverage has been as influenced by current events as it was by goings-on inside halls of higher learning and professional practice.

Previously on Archinect: Updated Munger Hall images show two floors removed as controversial project seeks approval

Twelve months ago, we documented what happened once the industry began to recover from a years-long pandemic-plagued economy. What followed was a year marked by new pinnacles and uncertainty within the industry. With an eye for the murkiness that ha...